World-famous author Percival Mendelssohn and his wife Iris were the toast of literary society until her shocking suicide exposed the emptiness behind the couple's idyllic public image. Convinced that there was no love left in the modern world, Percival decided he would abandon it, disappearing from the face of the Earth and leaving stunned fans to forever wonder what happened to their favorite writer. Now, nearly a decade has passed, and one girl is determined to find her authorial guru and get some answers. Julia Jimenez has traveled halfway around the planet to Beijing, and she's convinced the strange man she's found hiding in a Chinese home is the one everybody's been looking for. In fact, the more he denies it, the more sure of her discovery Julia becomes. Insinuating her way into his life of isolation, she slowly tries to draw Percival back out amongst the living. Can she prove to him that his safe and precious life, tucked away with his books and an army of cats, can't protect him from the harsh realities he's trying to deny? Or has he become so broken by the failure of his romantic ideals, he can never be at peace again?
Jamie S. Rich is a novelist living in Portland, OR. He has published four prose works: CUT MY HAIR, I WAS SOMEONE DEAD, THE EVERLASTING, and his most recent, HAVE YOU SEEN THE HORIZON LATELY?, released by Oni Press in the summer of 2007.
In addition to writing fiction, he has worked as a music journalist, a manga rewriter, and spent ten years editing comic books, four of them at Dark Horse Comics and six as editor-in-chief of Oni Press. He continues to work in the comics field as a writer, contributing to anthologies published by Dark Horse and Image Comics, including a piece in the acclaimed collection "Put the Book Back on the Shelf," where comic book creators adapted the songs of Belle & Sebastian. Rich debuted his first ongoing comic book series in June of 2006, LOVE THE WAY YOU LOVE, a collaboration with Marc Ellerby (now collected in two omnibus editions). This was followed in the fall of that year by the original graphic novel 12 REASONS WHY I LOVER HER, drawn by Joëlle Jones.
The writer teamed with Joëlle Jones a second time for another full-length graphic novel, YOU HAVE KILLED ME, a hardboiled crime story set in the 1930s. Oni Press published the book in July 2009, and the pair have already gotten underway on their next project. Zigging instead of zagging yet again, the artistic team has joined with cartoonist Nicolas Hitori De to release the teenage witch comedy SPELL CHECKERS.
Rich spouts off about whatever strikes his fancy at his blog, Confessions of a Pop Fan (confessions123.com), reviews movies for DVDTalk.com, and dives into his Criterion Collection like Scrooge McDuck swimming through his money at CriterionConfessions.com. He lives alone with a cat who doesn't understand his obsession with DVDs, but who lets him do as he pleases as long as she is fed.
